So, you want to make animation? Animation isn't too hard too make, once you know how. In here, we will show you the general step to produce a simple classical animation. Once you are through, you will be able to make your first successful step to being an animator.
Create a storyboard
The first step of animation is to make a storyboard. A story board consists
of pages of thumb nails that shows the major scenes in an animation. In the
course of the animation, this story board will serve as a script to the director.
For starters, try to make a simple storyboard with a simple story line. It
may not need to be complicated to be catch the viewer's attention. You can
add in captions or any other text to explain the ongoing scenes.
Keyframes
The second step is to make the keyframes. A key frame is a frame that
has an actual picture of a character in the animation, it either shows where
the object starts and ends in a scene, or it show the important scenes where
certain actions or features are captured.
For starters pick a body part on a piece of paper and trace a line from where
it starts and finish. Then, make little marks on the line, to tell yourself
where that body part will be in the consequent scenes.
Timing
Timing is ver important in an animation. An slight inaccuracy in timing will
tend to result in a very big and obvious mistake in the outcome of the animation.
Therefore, making everything work and to have the desired effect that you
want is very hard and tedious joy. If possible, try not to acheive what you
want by trial and error. Plan everything that you want first and foremost,
then work on your plan until you are very sure you have planned everything
possible before you proceed.
Background
Next, find out if there are any parts of the figure that won't change
in shape, just in position. If there are, it's you're lucky day. That means
you can draw it on a separate sheet of paper, place it under what you're drawing
on, on the light table, and position it so it's in the right place. Try to
make full use of your keyframes. Just trace the figure on to the cell once
it is positioned correctly.
Nowadays, professional use xeroxing to do the copying, but for begginers and
simple animation, copying will be fine.
Sequencing
If the figure does change shape, take a separate piece of paper, and make
another key frame for the shape, this time the position is not important.
Once you've done this, position the shape with the key frame correctly, under
the cell with the actual frame. Repeat this for all of the cells, until you
have the figure in slightly different from the one before. Try to keep a habit
of numbering the cells at the bottom of the paper, so you can keep them in
order, all this little habits will help alot when you turn into a full blown
animator and have to keep track of thousands of sheets.
Colouring
After that, you need to give you animation color. On the clear cells,
there's the side you drew on and there's the back. On the back, paint in the
colors for the figure, but do not paint the background at this point. This
not only has an advantage of not smudging any paints when working with the
cell; if you take the effort to try it out, you will find the effect of colouring
from the back gives the character or object a more substantial look. It also
reduces errors of painting over your outlines. On separate cells, paint the
background without the object, so that you can reuse the background again
and again to reduce extra work. When all of this is done, you are ready to
shoot it.
Shooting
Shooting is the process of taking lots of cells you've drawn and making
the into frames you can work with. When doing this, put the background on
bottom, then the middleground, and foreground. Take a picture of it, then
set up for the next cell. For digital cameras, the camera should be connected
to a computer, to facilitate the storing of each individual frame.
Of course, you can try out with the traditional cameras designed for stop-motion
animation where two frames is taken on each shot.
The last step is to put all of the separate pictures into a program that will animate them, one example is by using Premier. Any other movie making programs might just work out the same. Put all of the frames in order, and see what your production looks like. You'd be amazed!
View a short clip of home made animation.
Contributed by Art Club of Victoria Junior College.
There are four major parts to make an animation:
Development of ideas and story
First of all, there must be an idea to base the animation on. When an idea
is developed, the characters and stories are further explored and expanded
upon. This means the chracteristics of each character and details of the story
to make it worth the budget it is using!
The directors of an animation would then come out with a script; and later
a storyboard where thumbnails of major scenes are sketched with captions to
elaborate on it.
The soundtracks used in the animation are also created at this point of time.
This stage is the most important stage of creating a successful animation,
because it is here where all the timing and plot of the story is created.
With an impeccable timing, you can be surprised how much better the animation
is presented, and it also shows the standard of the animation tremendously.
Sketching and Drawings
In the second stage, a chief animator would draw out the keyframes of
the animation. Keyframes are significant scenes in the story that shows the
essential actions that lead to the development of the story, so that the assistants
or junior animators can use it as a base and fill in the scenes in between
so that motions would flow smoothly. This process done by junior animators
is commonly known as inbetweening or tweening.
Most of the time, there will be the main animators who take cares of the different
characters, and the special effect animators will take care of the non character-based
frames, from background to shadows to happenings. The pictures will be taken
through a pencil test, where the drawings are animated without any frills.
Only then it is inked and coloured on. Finally the different sheets of cels
will now be cleaned and polished in preparation for screening.
Putting it all together
The third stage is where all the cels and pieces of art are compiled together
and screened. There are different ways of screening the animation, one is
by using a camera and screen the fast flipping of pages, while another is
by scanning the different pages and then put them together to form the movie.
These modern day, it is more practical to use the latter method.
At this stage the sound and music of the animation is also recorded to match
the pictures perfectly. The timing and accuracy of sound and music is very
important, as it determines whether the animation will capture the audience's
attention or loose it completely. The stitching together of the music and
pictures requires much skills and a certain talent to make it work.
Editing
Finally, the film is now edited carefully and final touches are made to
make sure it has the maximum effect. Editing a film is usually an elaborate
process that involves the coming together of different minds and oppinions
of the directos. They will decide on how to cut short the film to fit into
the required length of movie. As well as decide which part will prove to be
useful and which parts would be better without.
After all the hard work and struggling, now, the seemingly short film is ready to be viewed by the world!
One of the questions any initiate into animation would ask: why use story boards? Why not just use scripts as they do in movies? One of the main reasons is that the main concern with animation is the story and sequence of images itself. By using a storyboard, it reduces the dialogue and tell the story through the actions itself. In this way the story is presented more directly and efficiently.
Here is an interesting point to consider, the movie, Jurassic Park also made use story boards, this is understandable since most of movie makes use computer animated graphic as special effects.
Essentials of storyboard
When plotting a storyboard, we must first be sure what story we want to
tell, what do we want to present to the audience? In what way can we hold
the audience's attention? Other than that, we must also ensure that our story
has a starting as well as an ending, otherwise, it will be a story without
an aim. And since we are dealing with animation, the timing of the story also
holds a very important part when we plan our storyboard.
A storyboard holds all the important scenes, we do not need to draw out every single action of the story. We can make use of short notes to describe how the story is to proceeds or describe the background.
We can also consider using a separate script for the dialogue and sound effect instead of squeezing everything into the storyboard. We must keep in mind that a storyboard is for our own convenience, it is in no way suppose to restrict our work.
Of course, other than the storyboard, there are many other point we can consider while making an animation. All these is possible to be learned through experience. You don't need to be an expert to come out with an interesting animation.
Tips for an interesting story
When we plan our story, we must first consider what story we want to tell,
and what is in the story that will hold the audience's attention. We must
always keep in mind that keeping the audience in front of the show is always
our first target.
We must also consider how we want to start or end a story, since these are
the moments that will make the most impression on our audience. As I stress
once again, when we plan our storyboard, we must always take note of the timing.
A few tips of making an effective animation is keep track of the suspense
in the story. Even the simplest actions can keep the viewer in anticipation.
Another is to make use of squashing and stretching of the elements in your
animation. Keep in mind that this is a cartoon that you are creating, you
can do whatever you want with it!
Use as much exaggeration as possible! We should not rely on subtlety in an
animation. Instead do as much as you can to put your point across, that means
big and outrageous movements.
In an animation, you may want to hint to the audience where they should pay
attention to, therefore, we should minimize as much secondary actions as possible.
That's about the major points we should take note when we plan our animation. If you keep in mind these advice, I'm sure you animation will turn out to be a big success!
Animation is truly an amazing art form that is now gathering attention from people around the world, and therefore gaining much importance now than ever; but few people actually know how an animation film came about. Creating an animation sometimes could be as tedious and complicated as creating a full-length movie, at times even more.
The following few pages deals with the processes of coming out with an animation. As well as the effort and hardwork put in to produce with even the most simple animations.
There are also a few tips included to produce a better animation.
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